The modern internal combustion engine such as used in automobiles, trucks, and like vehicles has been refined and improved over the years since its inception. One aspect of this type engine, namely the igniting of the air/fuel mixture in the combustion chambers has been largely ignored.
In combustion engines, the spark plug is depended upon to ignite a chemically correct air/fuel mixture (approx. 15:1) in a large cylinder head. To accomplish this task, the ignition is started before the piston reaches the top dead center of the compression stroke. This is known as the spark advance and can be as much as 40 degrees before the top of the compression stroke. It therefore may be recognized that any work that is started before the end of the compression stroke is negative and is dissipated as heat in the engine.
Commonly engines operate at a 10 to 20 percent richer mixture than the chemically correct air/fuel ratio. This inefficiency results in lower gas mileage and the high exhaust pollutants of carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons. Hydrocarbons are the result of unburned gases. High compression ratio engines operate at high combustion temperatures and thereby create higher concentrations of nitrogen oxides. To reduce nitrogen oxides, nominal compression ratios have dropped from a high of 10.5:1 to 8:1.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,218,993; 4,646,695 and 4,696,269 are directed to a method and apparatus for the iginition of a fuel-air mixture in an internal combustion engine, employing a flame front. In the inventions disclosed in these patents, a jet of hot flame of high velocity is injected into the engine cylinder which is charged with a fuel/air mixture under pressure. Whereas the disclosures of these patents recognize the inherent inefficiency of the commonly employed spark plug as the igniter of the fuel/air mixture within the cylinder, and teach the use of a flame generated at the spark plug and propagated into the engine cylinder, these prior art concepts suffer from the difficulty of adjusting the proximity of the electrode of the spark plug to the cylinder. This problem is exacerbated by reason of the large differences between engine geometries, differences between the physical relationship of the electrode of the spark plug and the cylinder of difference engines, among other inherent problems relating to positioning, propagation and alignment of the flame front(s) with respect to the cylinder and its piston and intake valve, for example.